© Slawomir Kamisnki/Agencja Gazeta via REUTERS

Poland’s de facto leader Jarosław Kaczyński and Viktor Orbán share the same goal. They both aim to use the coronavirus crisis to strengthen their power. But in Poland, unlike in Hungary, the right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) government is doing everything it can to prevent the declaration of a state of emergency.

According to the Polish constitution, declaring a state of emergency would require the postponement of the presidential elections scheduled for May 10. This delay would be a political setback for the sitting PiS government, which believes that incumbent President Andrzej Duda is the clear favorite, especially now that campaigning has been suspended due to the coronavirus crisis. The government thus has an incentive to hold the election amid a pandemic and a lockdown.

As a result, Poland is slipping more and more into a state of a blunt power struggle. On the one hand, the government is introducing more and more stringent restrictions to fight the pandemic, including a ban on entering forests, beaches, and parks. The fact that soldiers, in addition to the regular domestic security forces, are monitoring compliance with these regulations adds to the sense of seriousness.

At the same time, PiS representatives have long argued that nothing stands in the way of holding elections in early May—with over 30 million registered voters—in the usual way. They even threatened that local authorities who refuse to organize the elections due to health risks will be removed from office and replaced by commissioners.

After the government’s own health minister raised questions about the public health consequences of holding the election as planned, the government came up with the idea of bypassing current laws, by changing the Electoral Code and allowing postal voting only for all citizens, without even opening any ballot stations. Although the Constitutional Court has ruled that it is forbidden to amend the electoral law less than six months before the election, the government appears determined to go ahead. To make sure, the head of the post office has been replaced by a trusted deputy defense minister.

Political Turmoil

Forcing a shift to a postal vote would not only deepen the permanent political turmoil in which Poland has found itself since PiS returned to power in 2015, but there is also the sense of an acute crisis of legitimacy. Surveys indicate that almost 80 percent of Poles support postponing the elections, and only about a quarter of them believe that postal voting is a good idea. While this reluctance does not seem to worry Poland’s government, who typically seem to follow Kaczyński’s orders, it would certainly make it harder to build national solidarity in the face of a crisis.

Meanwhile, Kaczyński and his acolytes have been trying to remove further obstacles to the postal elections. A war raging within the governing coalition, between Kaczynski and the leader of one of two PiS’s small coalition partners Porozumienie (“Agreement”), Jarosław Gowin, who didn’t want to bow to Kaczynski’s will, ended up humiliated.

Gowin proposed a compromise solution, an amendment to the constitution that would extend Duda’s term by two years, with no possibility of re-election. But Gowin did not find support for his proposal in the ranks of the opposition, whose votes are necessary for constitutional changes. Failing then to convince Kaczyński to postpone the election, he resigned as deputy prime minister, but announced that his party will not leave the government replacing him with his party colleague, Development Minister Jadwiga Emilewicz.

When it seemed that sidelining Gowin brought the ruling camp closer to its desired goal, a notion to bring the bill to the parliament’s floor was surprisingly rejected at first by the Sejm on Monday; by the evening, however, there was a majority for switching to a postal vote. It’s not plain sailing, though. The Senate, where the opposition holds a marginal majority, also needs to approve the measure. Although the Sejm can reject its veto, the Senate has now 30 days to discuss with the bill. This means that after the final adoption of the law there would only be a few days left to organize the elections. They may then be moved, possibly to May 17, as the new law grants the Speaker of the Sejm, who takes her orders directly from Kaczyński, the right to change the election day.

Time to React

Should the presidential elections go ahead in May, there are serious doubts they would be considered fair and fully free. But for the time being, the EU, which has reacted to various breaches of the rule of law in Poland in the past, has taken a backseat, as it has in Hungary. Last week, a European Commission spokesman noted that “it is for member states to decide whether to postpone planned elections in the current context,” as long as such decision is consistent with the member states’ constitutional obligations.

However, steps taken so far by the EU to halt the Polish government’s anti-democratic tendencies, including triggering the Article 7 procedure, have had little impact on Poland. And anti-EU sentiments continue to be strongly expressed by the government and its acolytes. Public television—which serves the government as a propaganda mouthpiece—, journalists with links to the ruling party, and PiS MPs have all accused the European Union of showing a lack of solidarity and of interfering in Poland’s domestic affairs. This time, this anti-European choir was also joined by Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki, considered a moderate and relatively pro-European, who claimed that “the European Union did not give a single cent for the fight against the coronavirus.”

Can the Law and Justice party make its tactic work? And if yes, will it drag Poland further away from the European Union? It may soon turn out that the anti-European rhetoric and putting politics ahead of the fight against the epidemic and its economic consequences backfires. All the more so, because the government’s economic “’anti-crisis shield’ is quite modest when compared with other European countries. It accounts for about 10 percent of Poland’s GDP, while other leaders have put packages of up to 20 percent of their respective countries’ GDP on the table.

What is more important, however, is the fact that as many as three quarters of Poles expect that the experience of the pandemic will result in closer cooperation between EU member states. If the EU succeeds in rebuilding trust by preparing ambitious and effective aid programs, this feeling could be further reinforced. And Poles, whose euro-enthusiasm is widespread, although often superficial, might quickly come to the conclusion that isolation the PiS way is not splendid, but miserable.

NB. This article was updated on April 7 to include the vote taken by the Sejm.

The post Poland’s Troubled Presidential Elections appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Kacper Pempel

Eastern Europe is a region more internally divided than any other part of the continent. It is homogeneous only in ethnic terms—its population is almost entirely white (apart from some Roma populations in some countries), which makes it rather exceptional and ill-suited to the realities of a globalized world.

When modern national identities were emerging, most of today’s Eastern European countries were not even on the map. Their most prominent nationals were citizens of other countries, and their broader populations were generally poorly educated and politically disenfranchised. The common experience that ultimately united Czechs, Poles, Romanians, and Hungarians was communism.

The 19th-century experience of struggles for independence has made Eastern European countries more nationalistic and more sensitive to issues of sovereignty, while the experience of communism (which was often more nationalist than leftist) has discredited the political left. The legacy of communism is that the region is poorer, more backward, more corrupt, and cut off from immigration.

Eastern European countries also differ from their Western neighbors in terms of their economic model. They lack the experience of the postwar welfare state. Meanwhile, the fall of communism came at the height of faith in neoliberalism, which is why the capitalism that was introduced in Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary (as well as Russia) is far more neoliberal that its equivalent in Germany, France, or Italy.

The Narcissism of Small Differences

All of these factors serve to differentiate Eastern Europe from the West and underlie its classification as one cultural-political region. But this is a region dominated by the narcissism of small differences, where no country wants to be compared to the others because they all aspire to join the West. Every country in the region suffers from the complexes of backward and aspiring countries, meaning that they are all constantly competing with each other in an attempt to prove they are better than their neighbors.

For example, the Poles look down on the Czechs for not having fought hard enough for their country, while the Czechs disdain the Poles for constantly engaging in battles that cannot be won. The Poles see their country as the region’s natural leader because it is larger and more populous. But no one else sees Poland in that role. The Czechs see themselves as the most modern and most Western nation in the region. Slovakia, Slovenia, and the Baltics are in the eurozone. The Hungarians, meanwhile, are the only ones in the region who have international ambitions: Viktor Orbán wants to be the leader of Europe’s populist right. Jarosław Kaczyński wants Europe to leave him alone, but he joins Orbán in his campaigns from time to time.

Eastern European societies know much less about each other than they do about Germany or Austria. Language, religion, culture—there is much more that divides us than unites us. This is true even for the historic incorporation into empires. The territories of today’s Poland belonged to three empires at various times, which is still evident in railway and road infrastructure, and even in voting patterns.

Monastery, Mob, or Madhouse

The common experiences of 19th-century nationalism and 20th-century communism make the region far more populist than Western Europe. But the region’s internal differences also mean that it is home to entirely different brands of populism.

Poland’s populism is ideological, while the Czech Republic’s resembles the iconic Czech literary character Josef Švejk in that it is half-witted and bumbling, and therefore less threatening. Hungary, meanwhile, has gangster populism. Poland’s ruling party, the Law and Justice Party (PiS), is like a monastery, Hungary’s Fidesz is like the mob, and Andrej Babiš’s ANO is like a madhouse. The populism of Slovakia’s former prime minister, Robert Fico, does not resemble anything—it is an invisible populism, although it involves the rather surreal element of cooperation with the Italian mafia. Fico’s invisible populism has proven the least populist, and fostered economic growth in Slovakia. On the other hand, it has also proved the most murderous—only Slovakia has experienced the killing of a journalist, most likely with the involvement of businessmen cooperating with government authorities.

As political scientists Martin Eiermann, Yascha Mounk, and Limor Gultchin of the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change have shown, only in Europe’s post-communist east do populists routinely beat traditional parties in elections. Of 15 Eastern European countries, populist parties currently hold power in seven, are part of a ruling coalition in two more, and are the main opposition force in three.

Eiermann, Mounk, and Gultchin also point out that whereas populist parties captured 20 percent or more of the vote in only two Eastern European countries in 2000, today they have done so in 10 countries. In Poland, populist parties have gone from winning a mere 0.1 percent of the vote in 2000 to the current PiS government winning two consecutive parliamentary majorities. And in Hungary, support for Prime Minister Orbán’s Fidesz party has at times exceeded 70 percent.

Liberalism Is a Western Import

Hard data aside, we need to consider the underlying social and political factors that have made populism so much stronger in Eastern Europe. For starters, Eastern Europe lacks the tradition of checks and balances that has long safeguarded Western democracy. Unlike Poland’s de facto ruler, PiS chairman Kaczyński, Donald Trump does not ignore judicial decisions (so far, at least).

Or consider Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Trump and his campaign’s ties to Russia. Mueller was appointed by US Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, a government official who is subordinate to Trump within the executive branch. But while Trump has the authority to fire Mueller or Rosenstein, he didn’t dare to do so. The same cannot be said for Kaczyński.

Another major difference is that Eastern Europeans tend to hold more materialist attitudes than Westerners, who have moved beyond concerns about physical security to embrace what sociologist Ronald Inglehart calls post-materialist values. One aspect of this difference is that Eastern European societies are more vulnerable to attacks on abstract liberal institutions such as freedom of speech and judicial independence.

This shouldn’t be too surprising. After all, liberalism in Eastern Europe is a Western import. Notwithstanding the Trump and Brexit phenomena, the United States and the United Kingdom have deeply embedded cultures of political and social liberalism. In Eastern Europe, civil society is not just weaker; it is also more focused on areas such as charity, religion, and leisure, rather than political issues.

Attractive for Losers and Winners

Moreover, in the vastly different political landscapes of Europe’s post-communist states, the left is either very weak or completely absent from the political mainstream. The political dividing line, then, is not between left and right, but between right and wrong. As a result, Eastern Europe is much more prone to the “friend or foe” dichotomy conceived by the anti-liberal German political and legal theorist Carl Schmitt. Each side conceives of itself as the only real representative of the nation and treats its opponents as illegitimate alternatives who should be disenfranchised, not merely defeated.

Another major difference between Eastern and Western European populists is that the former can count on support not only from the working class, but also from the middle class. According to research conducted by Maciej Gdula published in Krytyka Polityczna, political attitudes in Poland do not align with whether one benefited or lost out during the country’s post-communist economic transformation. The ruling party’s electorate includes many who are generally satisfied with their lives, and are benefitting from the country’s development.

For such voters, the appeal of the populist message lies in its provision of an overarching narrative in which to organize positive and negative experiences. This creates a sense of purpose, as it ties voters more strongly to the party. Voters do not develop their own opinions about the courts, refugees, or the opposition based on their own experiences. Instead, they listen to the leader, adjusting their views according to their political choices.

The success of the PiS, therefore, is rooted not in frustrated voters’ economic interests. For the working class, the desire for a sense of community is the major consideration. For their middle-class counterparts, it is the satisfaction that arises not from material wealth, but from pointing to someone who is perceived as inferior, from refugees to depraved elites to cliquish judges. Orbán and Kaczyński are experts in capitalizing on this longing.

Dissimilar Twins

Stalin, in the first decade of Soviet power, backed the idea of “socialism in one country,” meaning that, until conditions ripened, socialism was for the USSR alone. When Orbán declared, in July 2014, his intention to build an “illiberal democracy,” it was widely assumed that he was creating “illiberalism in one country.” Now, Orbán and Kaczyński have proclaimed a counter-revolution aimed at turning the European Union into an illiberal project.

After a day of grinning, backslapping bonhomie at the 2018 Krynica conference, which styles itself a regional Davos (Orbán was named its Man of the Year), Kaczyński and Orbán announced that they would lead 100 million Europeans in a bid to remake the EU along nationalist/religious lines. One might imagine Václav Havel, a previous honoree, turning in his grave at the pronouncement. And former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yuliya Tymoshenko, another previous winner, must be aghast: her country is being ravaged by Russia under President Vladimir Putin, the pope of illiberalism and role model for Kaczyński and Orbán.

The two men intend to seize the opportunity presented by the United Kingdom’s Brexit referendum, which demonstrated that, in today’s EU, illiberal democrats’ preferred mode of discourse—lies and smears—can be politically and professionally rewarding. The fusion of the two men’s skills could make them a more potent threat than many Europeans may realize.

What Orbán brings to the partnership is clear: a strain of “pragmatic” populism. He has aligned his Fidesz party with the European People’s Party (the group in the European Parliament that brings together conventional, center-right parties including Angela Merkel’s CDU/CSU), which keeps him formally within the political mainstream and makes the German chancellor an ally who provides political protection, despite Orbán’s illiberal governance. Kaczyński, however, chose to ally the PiS with the marginal Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists, and he quarrels almost ceaselessly with Germany and the European Commission.

Cynic vs. Fanatic

Moreover, Orbán has more of the common touch than his Polish partner. Like Donald Tusk, the former Polish prime minister who has served as President of the European Council since 2014 (and whose tenure is about to end), he plays soccer with other politicians. Kaczyński, by contrast, is something of a hermit, who lives alone and spends his evenings watching Spanish rodeo on TV. He seems to live outside of society, whereas his supporters seem to place him above it—the ascetic messiah of a Poland reborn.

It is this mystical fervor that Kaczyński brings to his partnership with the opportunistic Orbán. It is a messianism forged from Polish history—a sense that the nation has a special mission for which God has chosen it, with the proof to be found in Poland’s especially tragic history. Uprisings, war, partitions: these are the things a Pole should think about every day.

A messianic identity favors a certain type of leader—one who, like Putin, appears to be animated by a sense of mission (in Putin’s case, it is the same mission proclaimed by the czars: orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationality). So, whereas Orbán is a cynic, Kaczyński is a fanatic for whom pragmatism is a sign of weakness. Orbán would never act against his own interests; Kaczyński has done so many times. By attacking members of his own coalition government, for example, Kaczyński lost power in 2007, only two years after he had won it. He seems to have no plans. Instead, he has visions—not of fiscal reform or economic restructuring, but of a new type of Poland.

Orbán seeks nothing of the kind. He doesn’t want to create a new-model Hungary; his only aim is to remain, like Putin, in power for the rest of his life. Having governed as a liberal in the 1990s (paving the way for Hungary to join both NATO and the EU) and lost, Orbán regards illiberalism as the means to win until he takes his last breath.

Different Motives, Identical Methods

Kaczyński’s illiberalism is of the soul. He calls those outside his camp “the worst sort of Poles.” Homo Kaczynskius is a Pole preoccupied with his country’s fate, and who bares his teeth at critics and dissenters, particularly foreign ones. Gays and lesbians cannot be true Poles. All non-Polish elements within Poland are viewed as a threat. The PiS government has not accepted a single refugee of the tiny number—just 7,500—that Poland, a country of nearly 40 million, agreed with the EU to take in.

Despite having different motivations for embracing illiberalism, Kaczyński and Orbán agree that, in practical terms, it means building a new national culture. State-funded media are no longer public, but rather “national.” By eliminating civil-service exams, offices can be filled with loyalists and party hacks. The education system is being turned into a vehicle for fostering identification with a glorious and tragic past. Only cultural enterprises that praise the nation should receive public funding.

For Kaczyński, foreign policy is a function of historical policy. Here, the two men do differ: whereas Orbán’s pragmatism keeps him from antagonizing his European and US partners excessively, Kaczyński is uninterested in geopolitical calculation. After all, a messiah does not trim his beliefs or kowtow; he lives to proclaim the truth.

So, for the most part, Kaczyński’s foreign policy is a tendentious history seminar. Poland was betrayed by the West. Its strength—today and always—comes from pride, dignity, courage, and absolute self-reliance. Its defeats are moral victories that prove the nation’s strength and courage, enabling it, like Christ, to return from the dead after 123 years of absence from the map of Europe.

The Four Lessons of Populist Rule

The conventional view of populism posits that an erratic ruler will enact contradictory policies that primarily benefit the rich. The poor will lose, because populists have no hope of restoring manufacturing jobs, despite their promises. And massive inflows of migrants and refugees will continue, because populists have no plan to address the problem’s root causes. In the end, populist governments, incapable of effective rule, will crumble and their leaders will either face impeachment or fail to win re-election.

Kaczyński faced similar expectations. Liberal Poles thought that he would work for the benefit of the rich, create chaos, and quickly trip himself up—which is exactly what happened between 2005 and 2007, when PiS last governed Poland. But the liberals were wrong: PiS has transformed itself from an ideological nullity into a party that has managed to introduce shocking changes with record speed and efficiency. In fact, recent years have brought us four lessons about what makes populist rule more durable.

First, no neoliberalism. Between 2005 and 2007, PiS implemented neoliberal economic policies (for example, eliminating the highest income-tax bracket and the estate tax). But since returning to power in 2015, it has enacted the largest social transfers in Poland’s contemporary history. Parents now receive a 500 złoty ($120) monthly benefit for every child. As a direct result, the poverty rate has declined by 20 to 40 percent, and by 70 to 90 percent among children. And that’s just the most discussed example. In 2016, the government introduced free medication for people over the age of 75. The retirement age has been reduced from 67 for both men and women to 60 for women and 65 for men. The government is also planning tax relief for low-income taxpayers.

The 500 złoty child subsidy has changed the political paradigm in Poland. Now, no electoral promise that is not formulated as a direct offer of cash can have any hope of appealing to voters. PiS won big in the European elections in May 2019 thanks to its promise of paying out a 13th month of retirement benefits, which was enacted a week before voters went to the polls. In the campaign ahead of the Polish parliamentary elections in October 2019 the party ran on a promise of almost doubling the minimum salary (from 2250 złoty in 2019 to 3000 złoty in 2020 and 4000 złoty in 2023).

Second, the restoration of “order.” Independent institutions are the most important enemy of populism. Populist leaders are control freaks. For populists, it is liberal democracy that leads to chaos, which must be “put in order” by a “responsible government.” Media pluralism leads to informational chaos. An independent judiciary means legal chaos. Independent public administration creates institutional chaos. And a robust civil society is a recipe for chronic bickering and conflict.

But populists believe that such chaos does not emerge by itself. It is the work of perfidious foreign powers and their domestic puppets. To “make Poland great again,” the nation’s heroes must defeat its traitors, who are not equal contenders for power. Populist leaders are thus obliged to limit their opponents’ rights. Indeed, their political ideal is not order, but rather the subordination of all independent bases of power that could challenge them: courts, media, business, cultural institutions, NGOs, and so forth.

Third, electoral dictatorship. Populists know how to win elections, but their conception of democracy extends no further. On the contrary, populists view the separation of government powers, minority rights, and independent media—all staples of liberalism—as an attack on majority rule, and therefore on democracy itself.

The political ideal that a populist government strives for is essentially an elected dictatorship. And recent US experience suggests that this can be a sustainable model. After all, everything depends on how those in power decide to organize elections, which can include redrawing voting districts or altering the rules governing campaign finance or political advertisements. Elections can be falsified imperceptibly.

Fourth, might makes right. Populists have benefited from disseminating fake news, slandering their opponents, and promising miracles that mainstream media treat as normal campaign claims. But it is a mistake to think that truth is an effective weapon against post-truth. In a post-truth world, it is power, not fact-checking, that is decisive. Whoever is most ruthless and has the fewest scruples wins.

To Defeat Populism, Be Ruthless

Populists are both unseemly and ascendant. Trump’s supporters, for example, have come to view tawdriness as evidence of credibility, whereas comity, truth, and reason are evidence of elitism. Those who would resist populism must come to terms with the fact that truth is not enough. They must also display determination and ruthlessness, though without becoming the mirror image of their opponents.

In postmodernity, nationalism does not disappear into thin air. Unfortunately, in Poland and elsewhere, the only ideology that has survived in the post-ideological era is nationalism. By appealing to nationalist sentiment, populists have gained support everywhere, regardless of the economic system or situation, because this sentiment is being fueled externally, namely by the influx of migrants and refugees. It does not have to be real; imagined dangers also work well. Polish anti-Semitism does not need Jews, anti-communism works without communists. Another good example are anti-migration feelings, which can be whipped up without a single migrant or refugee around.

Mainstream politicians, especially on the left, have no effective message on the issue. Opposing migration contradicts their ideals, while supporting it means electoral defeat.

But the choice should be clear. Either populism’s opponents drastically change their rhetoric regarding migrants and refugees, or the populists will continue to rule in Eastern Europe. Migrants and refugees lose in either scenario, but in the second, liberal democracy does as well. Such calculations are ugly—and, yes, corrosive of liberal values—but the populists, as we have seen, are capable of far nastier trade-offs.

Kaczyński had succeeded in establishing control over two issues near and dear to voters: social transfers and nationalism. As long as he controls these two bastions of voter sentiment, he is safe.

The post Eastern Differences appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Kacper Pempel

As expected, PiS won the Polish parliamentary elections on October 13, but not as well as it hoped to. “We received a lot, but we deserve more,” said party leader Jarosław Kaczyński after the exit poll was announced that evening. The party won 43.6 percent of the vote, which will give it 235 out of 460 seats in the Sejm, the lower chamber of parliament. This is enough for it to maintain its absolute majority and continue governing alone, but not by much.

After a disappointing result in the elections to the European Parliament in May, the opposition parties decided to run for the Sejm separately, as three blocs. The centrist Civic Coalition led by the Civic Platform (PO)—formerly headed by Donald Tusk until he left to become president of the European Council in 2014—won 27.4 percent of the vote, or 134 seats. The agrarians led by the Polish People’s Party (PSL) received 8.6 percent (30 seats), and the left 12.6 percent (49 seats). The fifth party to cross the electoral threshold of 5 percent was the far-right Konfederacja (“Confederation”), with 6.8 percent. It will have 11 seats.

These results will change the political landscape in the Sejm, adding new voices from the social-democratic left and the far-right. The left, which failed to cross the electoral threshold in 2015 (as a coalition, it needed 8 percent), is back—rejuvenated. The old Democratic Left Alliance ran together with two newer parties, Razem (“Together”) and Wiosna (“Spring”), the party founded earlier this year by gay-rights activist and former mayor of Słupsk Robert Biedroń. Contrasting with PiS’s social conservatism, the left supports gay marriage and the right to abortion.

The other newcomer to the Sejm is Konfederacja, an alliance of nationalist parties formed ahead of the European Parliament elections, in which it finished slightly below the threshold. Openly euroskeptic, the party is even further to the right than PiS. This is bad news for the ruling party: it will face pressure from the right in the Sejm and stronger competition for nationalist voters, especially young people. According to the exit poll, Konfederacja got almost 20 percent of the vote in the 18-29 age group. It was also more popular among men than women.

The opposition’s main victory—practical and symbolic—is the Senate. Unlike in the vote for the Sejm, the three opposition blocs made a pact for the upper chamber of parliament, agreeing not to run candidates against each other. Together, they will have a slight majority of 51 out of 100 senators. In practical terms, this will allow it to slow down (but not completely stop) the legislative process by amending or rejecting bills proposed by PiS in the Sejm. The symbolic dimension is perhaps even more important: it shows what the opposition parties can achieve by working together.

Dominated by Domestic Issues

Since PiS came to power in 2015, politics has been dominated by the split between the party’s supporters and its opponents. Similarly, the election campaign was all about domestic issues. PiS successfully kept the focus on two main topics: its new welfare policies and so-called “LGBT ideology”, which it presented as a threat. Kaczynski positioned his party as the “protector of the Polish family” by creating what he calls the “Polish version of the welfare state” and shielding it against an “attack” by gay people.

European issues and the Polish government’s protracted dispute with the European Commission over the rule of law hardly featured in the campaign. The PiS leadership’s main reference to the EU, in the context of its economic policies, was to bringing “European standards of living” to Poland. In the run-up to the European elections earlier in May, the party had soften its rhetoric in response to the opposition’s accusations that it wants to lead Poland out of the EU. Its slogan in that election was “Poland heart of Europe.”

While its relations with Brussels and Berlin remained strained, the PiS leadership were keen to highlight Poland’s good relations with United States and, specifically, the Trump administration. On October 5, just before the elections, the US President Donald Trump announced that Poland had been formally nominated for the visa-waiver program that allows visa-free travel to US for up to 90 days, which Warsaw had wanted for a long time.

When the new government is appointed next month, this approach to foreign policy is likely to continue, while domestic politics will again dominate the agenda, as PiS focuses on implementing its welfare promises and fighting off the opposition. Politicians are already thinking about the next standoff between PiS and its opponents: the presidential election in 2020.

Despite the inward-looking tendencies in PiS, domestic and European politics will remain intertwined. Relations with Brussels will not improve overnight: the PiS government’s dispute with the European institutions over the rule of law remains unresolved. Moreover, with Brexit on the horizon, Poland will have to think once more about its place in Europe.

The post No Earthquake in Poland, But Some Shifts appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Bernadett Szabo

The widespread assumption that good governance and high quality of democracy lead to better policy outcomes may hold true for many countries, but not for all. The 2018 report of the Bertelsmann Stiftung’s Sustainable Governance Indicators (SGI) found that “all eastern European countries (…) achieve better political results than their governance quality would suggest.” In other words, despite democratic backsliding and political polarization, even countries like Hungary, Poland, and Romania receive better scores for policy outcomes than might be typical for countries with institutional and governance problems.

And the SGI report notifies another very important fact: Decreasing the quality of democracy does not immediately reduce citizens’ confidence in the government. The report concludes that “fundamental democratic values are not sufficiently anchored in the political consciousness of a considerable part of society.” A high level of trust in governments with poor rule-of-law scores is mainly observed in central and eastern European countries—and Turkey, which will be left aside here. But what are the root causes of this trust? It would be foolish to focus solely on governmental influence on media, state capture of the public sector, or disinformation campaigns—all of them have their impact, but the origins of this phenomenon have to be searched for in different places.

Own Way Is Best

While these countries are as different as their respective paths, there are a few common features. Firstly, Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Jarosław Kaczyński in Poland, and Andrej Babiš in the Czech Republic have all questioned the transformation process of the 1990s. They have characterized the import of economic liberalism and some political attitudes (but not the whole process of democratization) as a failure, one which primarily served the interests of new political and economic elites and therefore must be undone or corrected. Such political messages understandably attracted a significant number of voters who lost out during the economic transformation process. It’s not an accident that two of these national-conservative and right-wing populist parties, Fidesz in Hungary and Law and Justice (PiS) in Poland, have strong support in economically underdeveloped and peripheral areas.

Secondly, some people still feel left behind despite the improvement of general economic performance since 1990.  In particular, the social policies of the 1990s and 2000s were perceived as underdeveloped by the public, and the new governments partly succeeded in filling this gap. For example, a study by the Polish Public opinion research center CBOS shows how the activities of the state toward the family were assessed over time: from mid 1990s until 2013, only around 10 percent of the respondents rated the state’s policy toward families as good or very good. But since the PiS government came to power and introduced a program of subsidies for families with two or more children, the public rating of government’s family policies rocketed. In 2016 and 2017, around 50 percent assessed it as good or very good, 35 percent as sufficient, and only 10 percent as poor. However, in other social policy areas, especially education, PiS hasn’t been as successful. Poles criticized the government’s education reform for overly centralizing control—they perceive the quality of education to be worse than before.

Thirdly, identity politics also plays an important role in maintaining support for the present governments. Political leaders have exploited the so-called refugee crisis in Europe to consolidate of their popularity. The depiction of refugees as a security threat became part of the political mainstream, and politicians like Slovakian Robert Fico, Orbán, or Babiš have spread the message that their firm attitude of “zero tolerance” would stop migration. Moreover, their political narrative also included islamophobia and bashing of the Western European countries for their policies of tolerance and solidarity. It has to be said that politicians and the vast majority of the public are on the same page in this regard.

Confronted with an East-West Divide

These leaders are aware of the great confidence they enjoy among citizens. They are also backed by good economic performance. Though nothing should be taken for granted in politics—the next general elections could change the current political course, at least in some countries like Poland and Slovakia—the growing self-confidence among the present central and eastern European leaders has implications for the EU.

More generous social policies make people feel that they are being seen and recognized. Moreover, assertive foreign policies create a distinction between the new governments and the previous political elites, who generally followed the western European (development) model.

Migration remains a key issue. The division between some central and eastern European countries on one side and EU institutions as well as some western European countries on the other side regarding compulsory relocation of asylum-seekers still resonates. Especially the Visegrád Group countries (Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia) see these liberal migration policies as a threat to their identities, for they believe that the “policies of multiculturalism” would ruin central European societies, value systems, and cultures—as has allegedly happened in western Europe.

Enlargement fatigue—the feeling in some member states, including France and Germany, that the major round of accessions in 2004 has weakened the EU—has transformed into the present East-West divide. The East, for its part, is presenting itself as a confident player, with leaders who are not connected with the liberal transformation and meet the expectations of the public to speak up for their interests at EU level. The quarrel started with migration policies, but it is spilling over into a broader cultural conflict.

Central European leaders win additional points for saying that this part of Europe is different (that is to say better) than western Europe, which must be no longer so diligently imitated. This East-West fragmentation (like the North-South divide on austerity) will play a significant role in the run-up to the European elections in May. And after that, it may be difficult to put the European puzzle together again.

The post Weak Polity, Strong Policy? appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© REUTERS/Kacper Pempel

As it grapples with Brexit, the European Union faces another challenge in its east: two member states that are not leaving, but are increasingly unwilling to play by the rules. These are Hungary and Poland, with Viktor Orbán and Jarosław Kaczyński at the helm. These two men are rolling back the gains of the countries’ paths to democracy after 1989, steadily undermining pluralism, checks and balances, and the rule of law. Orbán’s attack on the Central European University (CEU) in Budapest this spring is the latest embodiment of this tendency. This jars with the EU’s founding values, listed in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union, which include democracy as well as respect for human rights and rule of law. European officials are getting fed up; Budapest and Warsaw want EU money, but not its values, some of them say. Yet they are not sure how to proceed.

The parallels between Hungary and Poland are not accidental. In recent years, the hard right in both countries has embraced the legend of a historical Polish-Hungarian friendship. Hungarian nationalists attend the annual Polish Independence Day march in Warsaw; Polish nationalists have made pilgrimages to Hungary. Poland’s Law and Justice party (PiS), which has been in power since late 2015, has long admired Orbán for his ability to win elections and get things done. When PiS previously lost the parliamentary elections in 2011, Kaczyński told supporters that he was “deeply convinced that the day will come when we will have Budapest on the Vistula,” the river running through Warsaw.

The problem is not new. Orbán and his Fidesz party have been eroding democracy in Hungary since he became prime minister in 2010. Upon coming back to power, Kaczyński’s PiS set out to emulate his changes. Critics were quick to spot signs of Orbánization in Poland.

Breakneck Speed

PiS’s first targets – the constitutional tribunal and the public media – seemed to be straight from Orbán’s rule book, implemented at breakneck speed. The tribunal, which is supposed to strike down unconstitutional laws, was paralyzed. The public television broadcaster became a mouthpiece for the government. In Hungary, the pluralism of the private media has suffered too. Poland still has a vibrant, though highly polarized, media landscape, but liberal publications fear that PiS will try to suffocate them economically, citing Hungary as an example.

Hungarian and Polish leaders also share suspicion of NGOs, especially ones linked to George Soros, the Hungarian-American philanthropist. Orbán, himself a CEU graduate, has waged a long campaign against foreign-funded NGOs, accusing staff of harboring “paid political activists who are trying to help foreign interests here.” The Polish government has been working on plans to introduce a National Center for the Development of Civil Society, which would allocate state funds for NGOs. Organizations working on women’s and LGBT rights fear that it would help PiS redirect funds to conservative ones.

The result is that Budapest and Warsaw have emerged as an illiberal front within the EU, to use Orbán’s own phrase. PiS, which shares his hostility toward refugees and appetite for one-party rule, has done nothing to dissociate itself from these associations. One PiS minister told me that after “socialist democracy” in his youth followed by “liberal democracy,” he simply wants “democracy without adjectives.” More recently, one of his colleagues explained that there are different “flavors” of democracy across the EU, contrasting the one in, say, the Netherlands to that embodied by PiS.

Orbán and Kaczyński have gone so far as to call for a “cultural counter revolution” in the EU. Despite the difference in age and language, their joint appearance at a forum in the Polish mountain resort of Krynica last autumn looked like it had been rehearsed beforehand.  “There is a saying in Hungary that if you trust somebody, ‘you can steal horses together,’” said Orbán. At that, Kaczyński retorted that there is a “particularly large [stable] called the EU, where we can steal horses with Hungarians.”

The EU’s Dilemma

The growing illiberalism in Hungary and Poland has not gone unnoticed abroad. International human rights and press freedom defenders have sounded alarm bells. Freedom House, the American watchdog, entitled its 2017 report on democracy in the former Eastern Bloc “The False Promise of Populism,” singling out the situation in Hungary and Poland. Their example is a reminder that democratization is reversible, even in countries that are now members of the EU. Some observers fear that Orbán and Kaczyński will spur on populists in the region and beyond. In an interview with Polish daily Rzeczpospolita in the run-up to the French election, Marine Le Pen indicated that she views the duo as allies. “If I am president tomorrow, I will start a debate with Orbán on what seems impermissible in the EU,” she said. Kaczyński would receive the same offer, she added.

EU officials have been watching, too, unsure how best to respond. Brussels has long lost the leverage it had in the 1990s, when Budapest and Warsaw were prepping for membership. These days, it can fall back on the rule of law framework adopted by the European Commission in March 2014, in response to developments in Hungary and elsewhere. If dialog with the member state fails, there is the last resort Article 7 procedure, which can be activated if there is a “clear risk of a serious breach” of rule of law. At its most severe, it suspends a member state’s voting rights.

The past year has shown that the Commission is still learning to wield its new tool. The procedure was launched in January 2016 in response to PiS’s actions toward the constitutional tribunal. Since then, Warsaw and Brussels have been engaged in an awkward dance, adapting their steps as they go along. The Commission has trod carefully, fearful of provoking an anti-EU backlash in Poland. The Polish government has responded with more defiance, pushing on with its revolution at home, with no sign of slowing down.  Sovereignty is the mot du jour. In a speech in parliament after the Commission issued a negative opinion on the tribunal last May, Prime Minister Beata Szydło used the word 20 times in 23 minutes. Overall, Brussels’ hesitation has emboldened the leadership in Warsaw and Budapest, as the latest incident with CEU shows.

Orbán is in a better position than Poland’s leaders, though. For all his talk, he is well connected in Europe. His party is a member of the European People’s Party (EPP), along with Donald Tusk, Jean-Claude Juncker, and Angela Merkel. PiS, which is in the smaller European Conservatives and Reformists Party, cannot tap into this broad European network. PiS party chief  Kaczyński – he holds no office in the government – may be a skilled politician, but that stops at Poland’s borders. He rarely travels abroad and lacks Orbán’s charm. This difference was apparent as the European Parliament debated the situation in Hungary on April 26, 2017. Orbán, who had traveled to Strasbourg, defended his position articulately. It is difficult to imagine Kaczyński defending PiS’s actions like that.

Reluctance to Rock the Boat

In the Hungarian case, the EPP probably has the most clout. Stripped of its place in this mainstream political club, Fidesz would be significantly more vulnerable. There have been calls for the big European players in the EPP to put pressure on Orbán through credible threats. So far, though, they have appeared reluctant to rock the boat.

Meanwhile, as it focuses on Brexit, the EU may end up leaving the Polish government to its own devices. Warsaw and Brussels are playing a longer-term game. Some observers suggest that, rather than punish PiS, the Commission should simply wait for PiS to lose in elections, perhaps even in late 2019, when the next ones are scheduled to take place. This carries risks of its own, though. Even if the opposition wins then, PiS may have caused lasting damage to Poland’s institutions, which will take years to repair. Credibility may be difficult to rebuild, too, even with a new team in charge. Moreover, Warsaw’s growing isolation within Europe may have taken its own toll.

The past few weeks have highlighted cracks in the Polish-Hungarian friendship, which PiS banked on in the past. Its foundations were always shaky; the two countries differ on Russia, with Warsaw uncomfortable with Orbán’s chumminess with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Now the myth has been shattered by the debacle over Donald Tusk’s reappointment as president of the European Council in March. When the Polish government attempted to block it, Orbán sided with the other member states, unwilling to lose face himself.

Even if commissioners hold their breath on Poland, Europe will not. In the run-up to Brexit, EU leaders are mulling the bloc’s future. This may involve a version of the two-speed Europe, long feared by Poland, which, like Hungary, remains outside the eurozone. If PiS sulks, integration could continue without it. Polls in Poland since the Tusk debacle show the centrist Civic Platform (PO), his former party, catching up with PiS. This suggests that voters are realizing how badly PiS could damage Poland’s position in Europe and want to prevent it while they can.

The post Enemies Within appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

The PiS government is refiguring Poland’s foreign policy, even if much of its stressing Polish “sovereignty” is for domestic consumption. With Brexit looming, however, old and new questions need answers.

© REUTERS/Kacper Pempel

Last November Poland’s new prime minister spoke to the press in front of a row of flags – just Polish ones, as the EU flags had been removed. Beata Szydlo of the right-wing Law and Justice party (PiS), which had won the parliamentary elections a month earlier, explained that from now on her press conferences would be held “against a backdrop of the most beautiful white and red flags.” This gesture was largely forgotten in the months that followed, yet it set the tone for the new Polish government’s foreign policy, with its newfound emphasis on “sovereignty”. As the EU heads toward Brexit and potential reform, this is the word Poland’s partners in Europe can expect to hear…

Read more in the Berlin Policy Journal App – September/October 2016 issue.

The post Turning East appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

© Artwork: Dominik Herrmann

Read more in the Berlin Policy Journal App – March/April 2016 issue.

The post Close Up: Jarosław Kaczyński appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.